No Other Form of Hatred

“Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians revenged in advance against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him, for his revenge on them was not enough.”

- Ahmad Ragab, columnist for Al-Akhbar (Egypt), writing on April 18, 2001

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On this Yom HaShoah, I hereby dedicate this entry to the memory of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust…victims of a hatred which refuses to die.

- J.S. Slavin

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Show me a form of hatred which can equal anti-Semitism. The sad fact of the matter is, no other form of hatred has ever sentenced so many to death for an uncommitted crime. No other form of hatred has ever provided the foundation for so widespread a systematic slaughter of human beings. No other form of hatred has anti-Semitism’s longevity. No other form of hatred has ever been harnessed to bring about such profound human depravity.

No other form of hatred has as many apologists for it as anti-Semitism. No other form of hatred can gather about itself the cloak of legitimacy as anti-Semitism can. No other form of hatred has been as successful as anti-Semitism at creating what Sartre called “an elite of the ordinary.” No other form of hatred matches the virulence and passion of anti-Semitism. No other form of hatred masquerades as mere “criticism” as the world allows anti-Semitism to.

No other form of hatred should have recovered from such an event as the Holocaust, as anti-Semitism has…and yet, anti-Semitism didn’t die along with the 1.4 million Jews who perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anti-Semitism has persevered in spite of Belzec, and it has outlived Bergen-Belsen, Chelmno, Sobibor and Buchenwald. Over 800,000 Jews met their deaths at Treblinka, yet anti-Semitism, stubborn stalwart that it is, survives them still today.

Yes, anti-Semitism is alive and well, as any glance at the periodicals found at a Saudi or Egyptian newsstand can tell you (and as I once saw for myself in a Cairo hotel bookshop). Anti-Semitism, combined with Islamist doctrine and Arab nationalism, provides the fuel not only for the rhetoric of Hamas and Hizballah, but for their rockets as well. And in Geneva, Switzerland this week, anti-Semitism shall once again receive a subtle stamp of approval…

…at an anti-racism conference, of all things!

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Anti-Semite and Jew, felt that “The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith…He is a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself…In espousing anti-Semitism, he does not simply adopt an opinion, he chooses himself as a person.” The same is true of any racist, but as even Adolf Hitler admitted, “…in reality and from the genetic point of view there is no such thing as the Jewish race.”

So…why is it that anti-Semitism is permitted not merely to endure, but flourish? Why the resurgence in hatred of the Jew and things Jewish since the Holocaust? It would be facile of you – and, I daresay, a shade anti-Semitic – to point the finger at Israel alone, for such a view scapegoats the Jew for Jew-hatred. Plus, it ignores the pogroms which occurred in Europe after the concentration and death camps had been liberated, prior to Israel’s birth in May ’48.

No less a figure than Hitler himself observed, in his “Political Testament” (written February 1945), that, “Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-Semitism will never fade.”

And so on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I dare you to show me another form of hatred, a malady anti-Semitism’s equal or “better”, whose Final Solution – whose cure – was spelled out and attempted to be administered on a scale to match Hitler’s Judenfrei/Judenrein vision: “Under the guidance of the Reich, Europe would speedily have become unified. Once the Jewish poison had been eradicated, unification would have been an easy matter.”

Um, yeah…

There is no other form of hatred like anti-Semitism. You know it. I know it. Hitler knew it.

You’ll fail.

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“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

- Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha, on the war against Israel; May 15, 1948

A Prayer for Passover, 5769/2009

Once we were slaves in Egypt; now there are slaves in North Korea. Passover is a celebration of freedom, yet just a few hours north of where I am living, there are 150,000-200,000 people living in concentration camps. Passover commemorates the breaking of the bonds of Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt, and yet today, 22-23 million Koreans are enslaved under an abominable modern regime on the Korean Peninsula, with no hope or knowledge of any “Moses” (모세) who might deliver them from bondage.

According to state-run media in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il, their ruthless dictator, “felt regret for not being able to spend more money on the people’s livelihoods and was choked with sobs,” as North Korea launched a long-range rocket this past Sunday.

We who are lucky to be where we are and who we are, we whose heritage it is to “…explain to your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me, when I went forth from Egypt,’” (Exodus 13:8), and even those whose heritage it is not, should be choked with sobs that Kim Jong-il’s people have such a leader as he. It is our duty, indeed it is the duty of all freedom-loving people, whatever their creed be, to oppose such a monstrous application of human power. “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God,” said Thomas Jefferson.

It is reasonable to assert that Moses (משה) felt the same.

.חג שמח. לשנה הבאה בירושלים…וב…פיונגיאנג

Of Rockets and Tyrants

“I am afraid that if we fail to restrain this madman sooner rather than later, the same mankind that let Hitler have his way will have to face God’s judgment once again for failing to fulfill its moral responsibility.”

- Kang Chol-Hwan, who spent time in a North Korean gulag, writing about Kim Jong-Il in The Aquariums of Pyongyang

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The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has the most abominable, morally repugnant government on the face of the Earth. It cannot boast of any accomplishments, save for its survival up to this point…and even then, this is due mostly to the the aiding and abetting of the People’s Republic of China, itself no human rights paragon. Certainly, no credit is to be given to the Kim dynasty’s “self-reliance” ideology; the truth is, North Korea is a parasite.

Which is why North Korea’s launch of a missile today, Sunday, April 5, 2009, angers me deeply.

Even if it were the case that North Korea had actually launched a satellite, what purpose would it serve? How would the people of North Korea, starving by the millions, benefit from such a device orbiting the planet? What good would a “communications satellite” do a people who aren’t permitted to own cell phones or access the internet? Were we talking about a military satellite, that would at least make some sense, given Pyongyang’s militaristic government.

But still, with a significant percentage of its 23 million people starving, impoverished and imprisoned, North Korea has no business spending time and money on satellite development of any kind, much less on provocative rocket launches designed with the express purpose of pissing off the rest of the world. Kim Jong-Il is a monster, but he’s an all-too-human monster. It’s easy for some people to turn a blind eye to evil’s existence in this world; they do so to everyone’s detriment.

In the wake of North Korea’s latest thumb-nosing of the world, I issue a call for the following maxim, from Thomas Jefferson, to be read, remembered and adhered to with regard to the Pyongyang regime: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” When all is said and done, more is said than done. I pray that as far as North Korea is concerned, this status quo is tolerated not much longer. War is not necessarily the only answer; but neither, either, is appeasement.